Book Reviews / Comptes rendus / 83
A. Lynn Martin. Plague? Jesuit Accounts of Epidemic Disease in the Sixteenth
Century, Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1996.
Since Alexander Yersin's discovery of the bacillus Yersinia pestis in Hong Kong in
1 894, bubonic plague has been recognized as the culprit behind the great pandemics
of Eurasian history. Modern epidemiology has retrospectively established the
"unholy Trinity" of Y. pestis, the rat flea and the black rat itself as agent of the
bubo-producing and generally fatal disease known mors or "Black
as the Atra
Death." The plague caused the mortality of a third of Europe's population from 1347
to 1350, and struck more selectively but with devastating effect in subsequent
centuries.
The Jesuits were first-hand observers of plague in Catholic Europe. Engaged
from 1540 onwards in the apostolic activity of preaching, teaching and charity, they
came into daily contact with the urban populations most vulnerable to what Jesuits
described as "pest." Jesuits themselves suffered high mortality: a minimum of 445
disease-related deaths placed a brake on the Society's growth in the sixteenth
century.
In Plague? Jesuit Accounts of Epidemic Disease in the Sixteenth Century, A.
Lynn Martin examines their perceptions of "pest." Martin has two concerns: to test
the retrospective diagnosis of bubonic plague in the sixteenth century, and to
investigate the culture of Jesuits in its formative years. He has examined 1,500
accounts of "pest" found in correspondence and litterae quadrimestres between
Jesuit institutionsfrom 1540 to 1600. Jesuit records contradict modem medicine's
diagnosis. While buboes, or prominent lymphatic swellings, are amply reported,
other indicators of plague —
rat die-off, and the invisible (because flea-carried)
vectors of infection —
are lacking. In the Jesuit view, plague was spread person to
person, directly. Did Jesuits fail to notice the mortality of rats, anthropomorphizing
the disease at the expense of a clear understanding of its transmission? Or did they
encounter something other than bubonic plague? Even without an alternative
diagnosis, Martin's scepticism is well founded. The absence of any mention of rats
in Jesuit correspondence suggests that the epidemiology of the early modem world
must be reconsidered.
Plague? also investigates the Jesuit response. As Martin demonstrated in The
Jesuit Mind: The Mentality of an Early Modem Elite (1988), the experience of
Jesuits of lesser rank reveals as much about this innovative organization as the
heroic stories of Loyola and others at the centre of Jesuit affairs. Through exten-
sively quoted correspondence, we leam how Jesuits acted in times of plague, and
how the Society coordinated its activities when communications were restricted.
Martin finds that fatalism and a search for abnegation often accompanied outbreaks
of disease: some Jesuits found solace and a chance to die well, especially if disease
were contracted through service to the afflicted. Others sought to address the
symptoms of disease, and to preserve healthy individuals from its ravages. Such
84 / Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme
pragmatism, derived from Loyola's injunctions to avoid excessive corporal penan-
ces and to maintain the body so as to better serve God, was construed by some as a
sign of weak religious commitment. The rival order of Capuchins drew great credit
for their suicidal forays in Lazar houses where plague sufferers awaited death. Jesuit
reluctance to be similarly spendthrift of human resources was interpreted as cowar-
dice and excessive love of this world. As Martin further shows, the 1570s quarrel
between Jesuits and Carlo Borromeo, the reforming Archbishop of Milan, derived
in part from the perception that the Jesuits were saving themselves while letting
plague victims perish unsolaced. The argument that better service could be rendered
by the healthy contributed to the stereotype of the worldly Jesuit pursuing the
agenda of distant Rome.
To what extent were the Jesuits "modern," or secularized and empirical, in
their approach to epidemic disease? Martin reveals that the Jesuit religious commit-
ment did not occlude what we might construe as a "scientific" outlook. Jesuit
medical theory distinguished between primary and secondary causes. Divine action
produced the plague, as warning to or punishment of wayward humanity. Jesuits
promoted the standard religious remedies: reform, prayer and penance. But secon-
dary causes, including such natural and man-made factors such as miasmatic air,
the pollution of water, and the crowding together of the afflicted, called for different
responses, including medicinal intervention, dietary change and the physical
removal of those vulnerable to disease. Aware that mortality could be limited by
swift remedial action, many Jesuits were convinced that physical aid was as
important as spiritual succour. Other research — notably by Carlo Cipolla — has
established that the states of Northern Italy were at the forefront of public health in
the early modern world. The term "quarantine," for example, derives from the
Italian civic practice of 40 days' isolation. Martin shows that Jesuits contributed to
this movement to higher standards of shelter, nutrition and emergency response.
Jesuits did not attain a scientifically-validated understanding of the plague;
this in itself may explain why their accounts are not reconcilable with modem
epidemiology. Plague? demonstrates the tensions within the Jesuit outlook: sub-
mission to God and his punishments coexisted with a desire to palliate the plague
and to avoid the disease when possible. Fatalism jostled with the call for activism
in times of plague. Concerns about loss of property and income, as abandoned
houses were ransacked and fee-paying students disappeared from College rolls, are
prominent. In other words, Jesuits were like others caught up in the terrifying thrall
of a peril which they may have understood but could not control: fear if not panic
is close to the surface.
For those who study disease in history, the significance of Plague? lies in its
investigation of records which do not necessarily indicate Yersinia pestis. Historians
of the Jesuits will learn how the young organization responded to the not-infrequent
assault of "pest," and how this experience affirmed its "modern" orientation.
Book Reviews / Comptes rendus / 85
Students of sixteenth-century social life will learn from Plague? that despite panic
and disarray, Jesuits acted constructively in the face of this threat. Such activism
helped to prevent holocausts on the scale of 1347-1350.
PETER GODDARD, University ofGuelph
Robert D. Cottrell. La grammaire du silence. Une lecture de la poésie de
Marguerite de Navarre. Paris, Champion, 1995. Pp. 320.
On doit se réjouir que paraisse en français l'ouvrage de Robert D. Cottrell qui avait
fait date en 1986 dans sa version originale, The Grammar of Silence, et qui reste à
ce jour (malgré la subtilité de Paula Sommers dans The Celestial Ladders [1989] et
l'essai plus historique de Gary Ferguson, Mirroring Belief [1992]) la plus vaste
étude sur une poésie encore mal appréciée.
Robert D. Cottrell a le mérite d'avoir conduit sa réflexion sans négliger aucun
des textes majeurs et il a cherché à fonder son interprétation de l'écriture de la reine
sur de minutieuses analyses stylistiques. Dans la première partie — "La bonne
lecture" — , il était tout à fait pertinent de commencer par examiner les lettres de
Briçonnet, source essentielle de la spiritualité de Marguerite de Navarre. On
n'oubliera pas le chapitre intitulé "Marthe et Marie" qui éclaire si finement une
double expérience et le paradoxe d'une écriture à la recherche d'un langage qui
"serait l'équivalent du silence" (p. 14). La deuxième partie justifie son titre étrange
— "Le texte iconique" — par référence aux distinctions de Lacan entre "imaginaire"
et "symbolique." L' iconique, selon Cottrell, serait au delà de ces deux catégories:
le je et l'autre n'y "semblent pas identiques, ils le sont," et le texte iconique sait se
faire reflet de la réalité chrétienne (p. 98). C'est dans cette perspective que sont
placées les analyses du Miroir de l'ame pécheresse, du Miroir de Jésus-Christ
crucifié, des comédies de Mont de Marsan (où les rapports de quatre voix sont très
bien éclairés) et du Désert, et l'analyse du Triomphe de l'Agneau. La troisième
section, de loin la plus longue, —
"La poétique de l'amour" examine les —
Chansons spirituelles, La comédie sur le trépas du roi, La Navire, La Coche et
surtout Les Prisons.
Mais les chapitres ne sont pas exactement des successions de monographies.
Ce sont des mises en perspective qui se fondent chacune sur un texte privilégié pour
en déduire une manière, une qualité qui informe aussi les autres textes: ainsi pour
l'étude de La Navire dans "la rhétorique des larmes" ou pour celle de La Coche
dans "le mode emblématique." Pour aller et venir avec tant d'aisance à travers cette
oeuvre diffuse, il fallait en avoir une intime connaissance, ou, sil'on applique à R.
D. Cottrell la formule qu'il a choisie pour présenter les débuts poétiques de
Marguerite, une "bonne lecture."
